Alrighty… tourney report, by level, with the help of PokerTracker. As you’ll see, I didn’t win this with skill, it was just a question of getting completely run over by the deck and getting lucky on one hand.

Level I (10/20): The very first hand of the tournament, I get AJo, and raise it up from middle position. whoisspain, who took second in the first WWDN Invitational, calls my raise and we see an A2K flop. I bet the flop, 9 turn, and 8 river, and he calls me down with KQ. After the first hand, I’m the chip leader with 2110.

Level I (10/20): Still in the first level, I’m dealt AQo in the cutoff. Dixinator raises to 60, and I reraise to 120. He calls. He bets 100 on the 2A8 flop, and I raise to 350. He calls, and that scares me. We check the K on the turn, and I call his 150 bet on the river. He turns over A7, and I take the pot. My stack is up to 2750 in the first level.

Level II (15/30): I see a free flop from the big blind with Q♣2♣. The flop is T♣Q♠7♣. I bet 100, and get one caller. I bet 200 at the K (not ♣) turn, and then pair my 2 on the river but miss my flush. I bet 200 again, get called, and take down the pot. maxxel had KJo, and had me beat on the turn, but I had plenty of outs, and wouldn’t have bet or called had I not improved. Stack: 2810.

Level II (15/30): I open raise to 90 from the button with 76s. Arcon reraises from the big blind to 150, and I call. I catch a whole bunch of the 477 flop, and it goes check-check. Arcon comes out firing for 150 on the J turn, and I raise to 450. He calls. He check calls 450 on the 7 river. Them’s quads, beetches! He had KJ. Stack: 4225.

Level II (15/30): Very next hand, I get KK in late position (seat got filled, so I’m not in the cutoff). UTG limps, and I bump it to 120. Three callers. 26K flop. Bingo! Two clubs, so I have to play it fast. UTG fires out 230, and I quickly raise to 1000. We lose the other two, and UTG pushes. I call, and see him turn 22 for bottom set. Running 88 gives us both full houses, and I take the pot and bust littlerobbie. Stack: 7110, chip leader again.

Level III (25/50): Nothing much interesting happens in this level. I win a few, lose a few. My brother does get moved to my table during this level.

Level IV (50/100): I raise to 400 from the button with TT, Arcon calls from the big blind. I make a weak bet on the 8T8 flop, but he folds. Damn. Next hand, I raise preflop again with T9s, Arcon calls again. I miss the flop, but raise his 400 bet to 1000. He calls. Oops. He bets the turn, and I fold. Stack: 5165.

Level V (75/150): First hand at this level. I limp UTG with 88. I see the flop with the blinds, my brother and SoxLover. 8J4, two spades. When will I learn to slowplay? SoxLover bets 300, I raise to 800, and they both fold. Stack: 5765

Level V (75/150): Here’s the big one. Donegal pushes all in for 1170 UTG. SoxLover raises to 4200, and I wake up with KK. I push in for 5990 total, and SoxLover calls the extra 1790. Donegal has A6s, SoxLover has QQ. One 6 comes out on the flop, but no more help for anyone, and I take it down. Stack: 13375.

Level V (75/150): I call a raise from SoxLover with 65s. Flop is 76J, check-check. He bets the 4 turn, and I call. 6 on the river, and he pushes. I call, and he shows K8s. I take it down and bust him. Stack: 16669.

Level V (75/150): A couple of hands later, Wil gets seated at my table. I raise his first blind, and he calls me a bully and folds. I show him my JJ.

LeveL VI (100/200): I get KK for the fourth time in the tournament, my first hand at a new table that includes Iggy and Derek. I raise, take down the pot, and show it. Stack: 16544.

Level VI (100/200): I get the hammer in the big blind. maximovies raises in early position, and I reraise to 1500. I get reraised more, and have to fold. Stack: 15744.

Level VII (100/200/25): I don’t win any big hands, and lose a bunch of chips. Stack: 14770.

Level VIII (200/400/25): I lose a race with 44 vs heffmike’s A6. Stack: 9644.

Level IX (300/600/50). My stack is getting short, 6104. I get TT in the big blind, and reraise heffmike all-in. He shows JJ. Oops. I flop a ten, and double up. Stack: 13058. This was the only time I got lucky when I had chips at risk. heffmike is crippled with 2598 left, but recovers nicely and makes the final table.

Level X (400/800/50): I win a few, lose a few, basically fold and steal my way to stay alive. Here’s my only other close call of the tournament, and it wasn’t really. I’m fairly shortstacked with 10708 chips. I have KQ on the button. There’s a push for 2289 before me, and then it folds to me. I opt to fold it instead of push the rest of my chips in. Lucky me, as both blinds wake up with AK, and they chop the pot vs the small stack’s 55 when the case king flops. Stack after the level: 8958.

Level XI (600/1200/75): Still folding and stealing, I bust Kevinho with AK vs AQ. Stack: 15891.

Level XII (1000/2000/100): Fold and steal. Bust Toby039 (who busted Wil, and has next week’s tournament name) with AK vs AQ. Stack 35714.

Level XIII (1500/3000/150): I fold and fold and fold. Iggy busts Pauly. Iggy busts maureen73 with back to back suckouts, and then heffmike the next hand when he wins a race. We get three handed. I push with K6o. Iggy calls with 83o? I double up when I flop my king.

Level XIV (2000/4000/200): A few hands later, he doubles me up again with my KT vs his T3. I win the next hand when I reraise with AQo, and then he doubles me up AGAIN when my ATo beats his 62o. This all happened so fast I couldn’t believe it. Stack: 133712.

Level XIV (2000/4000/200): I get us heads up when my J9s turns a jack to beat RAH2’s K7. I have a 6:1 chiplead.

Level XIV (2000/4000/200): We play a total of 6 hands heads up. I double him up with 22 vs TT. On the final hand, he calls from the button, and I check with J♦3♦. I bet 5000 at the 5♦K♦4♥ flop. Iggy raises 7000 more, and I call. The turn is the 6♦, making my flush. I check, and Iggy pushes. I call, and he flips 87o, no diamonds, for a straight, drawing dead. The river doesn’t matter, and I win!

I hope to see everyone tomorrow:

Saturdays with Dr. Pauly on PokerStars
Saturday 11.5.05 @ 1pm EST
$10 + 1 NL
Password is hiltons
Tournament #14338880 (check under Private Tournament Tab)

First place prize = Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book
Pauly’s bounty = $15 iTunes gift certificate

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I just won the WWDN Donegal Invitational!

I’ll have a full tournament report after I eat and get to Home Depot, but let me just say right now that the deck hit me in the face, and I got lucky the one time I needed to. It finished as a heads up battle between me and Iggy, and lucky for me he was Guinness fueled.

You can read Wil’s liveblog of the event here.

Thanks Wil for hosting! It was a blast!

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My series from last night:

The 8th frame of the second game, I left a four pin. Good shot, just a touch high. Shoulda carried. Dammit. I’ll get my 300 eventually. Pretty bad series considering I had a 279 in there, but I can’t really complain any time I average 221 over 3 games.

Just in case you are reading this and somehow haven’t read this stuff elsewhere:

WWdN: Donegal Invitiational on PokerStars
Friday 11.4.05 @ 7pm EST
$10 + 1 NL
Password is monkey

Saturdays with Dr. Pauly on PokerStars
Saturday 11.5.05 @ 1pm EST
$10 + 1 NL
Password is hiltons
Tournament #14338880 (check under Private Tournament Tab)

WPBT Shootout on Full Tilt
Sunday 11.6.05 @ 3pm EST
$10 + 1 NL
Email Bill for the password
Restricted to only bloggers/readers who will be heading to Vegas in December

Haven’t played much (any) poker since my fun donkey session last weekend, so nothing to write about that. Just too damn busy, unfortunately.

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I now fully understand donkey poker, after spending the night at the casino 온라인 카지노. I started out playing 2/5 NL ($200 buyin) and was doing just fine until my AK ran into AA. Oops. I rebought, and a little while later, the following hand happened:

5 handed, I raise to $20 UTG with 77. Everyone calls except the big blind, and there’s $85 in the pot. The flop comes out 3J3, and the small blind fires out $50. Pretty easy fold for me. Next guy raises all in for $100 more, next guy calls all in for $100 total, and the small blind calls. $485 in the pot. All three turn over AJo. The turn is a 7, the river is a blank. The big blind said he folded 83o. Talk about tilt.

A short while later, the table breaks, and instead of moving to another NL game I decided to play 3/6. Here’s where the donkey poker started. I wanted to just have fun, and played reckless loose-aggresive. I was straddling and blind raising, and raising with any two cards even when I did look. I was chasing any hand that I thought wasn’t drawing dead. I hit more gutshot straight draws than I can count, and once sucked out with running 33 with my 73o (straddled, blind raised the flop). I even three-bet preflop with the hammer, and it turned out to be a good bet! The raiser had 63o. Sadly, he made a straight and I lost. I was playing like an abs­olute donkey, putting the table on tilt. I also had the most fun playing poker I’ve had in a very long time. I ended up losing about $100 (was up $200 at one point), but it was worth it. Donkey poker is FUN. Of course, this doesn’t explain online donkey poker. I don’t see how that can have the same rush. It’s similar to platforms like ชนะใหญ่ที่ บาคาร่า, which offers various bonuses.

In other poker news, everyone should go congratulate my brother and his $3 MTT win at Stars for $1246! He doesn’t have a post up about it yet, but I’m sure he will soon, especially if I send some traffic over there. Here’s a screenshot of him with the chiplead heads up:

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Because everyone else is doing it:

My blog really isn’t worth nearly that, even by whatever method was used to come up with the value. Sadly, as far as links back to the actual blog, it’d be worth far less than that. Tehcnorati counts every link to my terror alert page as a link to my blog, though, which pumps up my value nicely.

Here’s a little reminder that the third weekly WWDN Tourney, this one called the Up4Poker Invitational, is tomorrow at 9 PM EST (6 PM in California! I can play from home!). It’s a $10+1 at PokerStars. Don’t forget to sign up and play! These tournaments, and the Blogger Championship on Sunday have pretty much been the only poker I’ve been able to play lately. I still need to get a new desk and set up my computers again so I can get back into it.

Last week, I cracked and bought a $700 item from Woot. It’s something I’d been planning to get eventually, just not quite so soon. Well, my InFocus ScreenPlay 4805 showed up yesterday, with Fedex nicely redelivering a second time when I called them after they tried to deliver while I was at work the first time. It came a 76″ 16:9 screen, and the 10 disc Matrix DVD collector’s set (eBay, here I come!) Sadly, it also came with a wimpy 6 foot s-video cable. I was able to connect two composite video cables I had together and get the thing working (it’s awesome!), but composite doesn’t compare to s-video or component. I spent a little more than I had to on some longer cables, because I think these look pretty cool, and I do want to run both s-video and component to the projector. I’m not one of those people who thinks Monster cables are better because they’re more expensive, though. I also got myself a ceiling mount for it. I can’t wait until it’s all set up. I don’t know if I’m going to mount the screen; it looks pretty damn good on my wall. Very pleased with my purchase.

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Saturday, I did some board gaming with some friends. Played a couple of games I had never played before, and a game of Power Grid. The first was a game with cooperative gameplay. We were all (except one, the traitor, whose identity was unknown and might not have even existed) trying to win together. It’s called Shadows over Camelot, and was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the traitor ended up winning, but it’s definitely a game I want to play again sometime. The other new game I played was Through the Desert, which is a very quick, fun game. I lost everything I played, but had a good time anyway.

Sunday was the Pokerstars Blogger Championship. I had already won my sweatshirt and hat from being chosen as one of the daily winners, and as expected, that was all I ended up with from the tournament. I feel like I played well, and was pretty happy with every single decision I made. Early on, I had a stack about 2500, and got crippled when actyper rivered a 5-outer on me. Instead of having 4500, and being able to play aggressively and push people around, I had 600, and had to pick my spots carefully. I managed to steal blinds from people sitting out for a while, and then double up with AQ vs Q9, and then double up again through Ugarte with TT vs AQ. I pulled a stop-and-go on the low flop from the big blind, and got called anyway. The blinds were big at this point, though, and I just never got anything from then on. On actyper’s final hand, I had AKs, but had to get away from it, as you can see from that hand history. I was card dead to basically blind and ante me off. My final hand I had A3s in the small blind, and just called all-in, as I had less than one blind. The big blind raised to protect my his hand, and I never improved against his KK. I went out in 354th. Pauly has a nice list of where all the poker bloggers finished. Congrats to everyone who made the money!

This weekend, I also got to set up my Polk XM Receiver. It’s pretty cool. Strangely, the best place for the antenna seems to be in my bedroom closet facing the wall. I also got my replacement Treo 650 from Amazon today, and everything seems to have restored off the SD card nicely. I think once the old one dries out, it’ll actually work again, too, but I needed a replacement before that happened. My new printer/copier/scanner/fax is awesome. I plugged it into my network, and am printing to it from both Linux and Windows as if it’s JetDirect device. I also installed my new 100gb hard drive in my laptop, and managed to get everything moved over to it without having to reinstall Ubuntu. As an added bonus, I discovered my laptop has USB 2.0 (not just 1.1 as I thought), and I have a nice portable 30gb drive now, thanks to this.

Overall, not a bad weekend considering how the end of last week went. (Oh yeah, the drawers I special ordered from Home Depot for my kitchen came in Friday – except they were the wrong size.)

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For future reference: A Treo 650 doesn’t work too well after running through the washing machine. Now I’m gonna be out another $600, plus I won’t have a cellphone until Monday. This happened not even a day after I finally sold my old Treo 600… at least I got $200 for that.

Update: The SD card in my Treo is fine. I haven’t lost any data.

Update 2: I have a phone. Got a free after rebate Nokia from the T-Mobile store with a 1 year contract extension, which is fine since I have no plans to switch anytime soon and I’ve been with them almost 4 years now. I’d been meaning to get a backup/spare phone anyway.

Poker related… I’m putting a bounty on myself for the WPBT Winter Classic. Whoever knocks me out gets a Poker Padz mousepad (thanks to Grinder for finding them, and posting a comment here so I could find him!). These things look cool. I’ll put up a review when I get it. I’d also be interested in getting custom ones made with the WPBT logo, but the information page says minimum custom order is 200 units. Would anyone else be interested? Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll quite get enough people wanting one to make that happen.

I’m sure I had other things to say, but this Treo thing has pissed me off to the point that I don’t want to write anymore.

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Sadly, what I won was not the WWdN: Where’s My Burrito? Invitational. Congrats to Joanne for winning that! With my move and working on the new house, I just haven’t had any time to play online poker lately, and have only been to the casino once in the past two months. My Windows machine is currently sitting in my garage, so I just haven’t been playing. I couldn’t pass this tournament up, though, and managed to get in and play it. I was a little rusty, to say the least, and made two awful calls to bust out early. Then I moved on to the .25/.50 NL cash game, and got destroyed there, though a lot of that was great second best hands as opposed to awful play. Second nut flush, and second nut boat are bad hands at no limit hold ’em when someone has nut flush (damn you, Pauly!) and nut boat. I still had fun playing, though.

What I won, though, is a piece of PokerStars apparel. That will likely be the only prize I take away from their blogger tournament. 🙂 Thanks, Stars!

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I’ve been too swamped with things to write anything here, and it’s a shame because I have a lot to say. No poker content, though, because I haven’t had any time to play (or even get my Windows machine out of my garage so I could play).

Baseball

I guess I’ll start with October baseball. I have (almost) no doubt that St. Louis is going to win it all. They are certainly the best team left in the playoffs (and the best team in the majors this season, anyway). I’m a bit disappointed the ALCS isn’t Sox vs. Yanks again, but I’m always glad to see the Yankees eliminated. I’m pulling for the Angels vs the White Sox, because if they win, I might get to go to a World Series game.

The end of last night’s game was ridiculous. Two outs, bottom of the ninth, tie game. A.J. Pierzynski swings through strike three, and Josh Paul catches it near the dirt. Home plate umpire Doug Eddings rings him up, and Paul rolls the ball back to the mound. Pierzynski then decides to run to first, as if the ball got away from the catcher. After much arguing, the umpires rule the ball hit the dirt, and he’s safe at first. After pinch runner Pablo Ozuna steals second, Joe Crede lines an 0-2 hanging breaking ball to the left field wall for a game winning double.

Now, there’s no guarantee the Sox wouldn’t have won anyway had the game gone to extra innings, but that call, in that spot, was just awful. I know, umpires make mistakes (but not as many as we think, and I agree with the article that we don’t need an instant replay in baseball), but this one was just unacceptable. He made the right call, and then got faked out by the batter, essentially. I think all the credit for the White Sox win belongs to Pierzynski. This map is hilarious. The whole country (hell, the whole world) except for Illinois think the blame for the Angels loss lies with the umpire. Illinois thinks it lies with the catcher for not tagging the batter out. After the home plate umpire called him out.

Whatever. Just crazy.

House

Alrighty, on to my house. It’s finally coming together, with just a little work left to do. The painters did a good job, once they finally did it right. The wiring is good, and the lighting is awesome. The wired in-wall speaker setup is very cool. The carpets were steam cleaned, and now I have to vacuum every day for a week or two and get the newly hatched fleas before they lay more eggs. Without a pet, I should be able to take care of this and not have them come back.

While the electricians were working, some of the ductwork in the attic got detached, so I had someone come in to fix it. He said he wouldn’t, because all the ducts had asbestos in them. Not good. According to this, an asbestos inspection isn’t required in California for a home purchase. I called the inspector, and he said as long as it’s non-friable, he doesn’t see any need to mention it. This needs to be changed. It’s definitely the kind of thing I would have wanted to know before buying. It wouldn’t have stopped me, but I could have at least factored in the cost of getting them removed, tested, and replaced. Or even had the sellers pay for that, possibly. I don’t think I’m in any danger, because the guy who did the removal said it was all self contained and not airborne. I still wanted it out of my house. I wonder how I go about getting the law changed so there needs to be an asbestos inspection before purchase.

There are a few other little things to do, like put exhaust vents in the attic and vent the fans from the bathrooms through the roof instead of just into the attic. I haven’t done anything with landscaping the backyard, or getting a sprinkler system put in yet, but I’m not really in a hurry for those things. I want to really start unpacking and getting more furniture now.

Fuck AIM

Not only is my AIM account still suspended, but I can’t even get them to respond to me. I’ve filled out the form at http://www.aim.com/suspended_account/report.adp a million times, and they won’t even e-mail me back telling me why my account is blocked. No response at all. Anyone who’s using AIM Mail should take this as a warning: Your account can get suspended and you’ll have absolutely no recourse. You’ll probably lose all your mail. I did manage to get an email reply from webmaster@aol.com, but AIM and AOL are different services, so they couldn’t help me. webmaster@aim.com got no response. If I didn’t know so many people on AIM, I’d probably drop it altogether and switch to something like Google Talk. I have created a new AIM account. If I was on your list, I haven’t contacted you, and you want to know my new screen name, send me an email. I’m still trying to get my old account back, but I have no hope that I’ll actually succeed. If anyone has any recommendations on what to try or who to contact, let me know.

Other Stuff

I went to a Green Day concert in LA Saturday. It was very good. I took a picture. That’s it, can’t think of anything else.

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